Beachcomber

The great majority of Rockawayresidents received their primaryCensus documents in the lastweek, and we are urging everybodyto complete the questionnaireand return it in a timelymanner. The Census is importantto Rockaway in many ways, notthe least being that the peninsulais striving to reach the populationnumbers that will make it possiblefor us to have our own representativesin the City Council, StateSenate and State Assembly. Everysingle resident counts, and wewant every resident to be counted.

Want to know what the Department of Education spends on consultants? Want to know how much a garbage truck costs? How about what it costs to keep our beaches clean? Comptroller John Liu says that he wants you to know the answers to vital questions such as those, so he is ramping up a website that will reveal every check the city writes. The site, which can be accessed at www.mymoneynyc.com, will be fully up and running by summer, although there are some interesting tidbits there already.

Dunbar Street in Bayswater finallygot its electricity back lateWednesday night, nearly four daysafter the big storm knicked outelectricity to thousands of customersin Rockaway. One Bayswaterresident whose home was on thefront page of last week’s paper,called to praise both CommunityBoard 14 District Manager JonathanGaska and the Parks Departmentfor their work in helpingto dismantle the large tree thatassaulted his house and took downpower lines and for getting powerrestored.

The MTA continues the fiction that all is right with the subway elevated structure that runs along the spine of the peninsula. There is massive work going on to rehab the stations, but the elevated structure itself continues to shed concrete unabated. Last week, a few large chunks came down at Beach 73 Street. Luckily, nobody was driving underneath at the time. That was the fifth incident of crashing concrete in the past year. We fear that one day that a large chunk of the elevated structure will come down on top of some cars, injuring some motorists. Perhaps the smart thing is not to drive along the Rockaway Freeway, the road that runs under the el.

The 101 Precinct in Far Rockawaywas hit with two homicides lastweek, both within a few blocks ofeach other. On Wednesday morning,an Hispanic man was stabbedto death on the beach at Beach 12Street in what police are calling agang-related murder. It appearsthat all of the men belonged to MS13, the violent Honduran gangthat has been making inroads intoFar Rockaway. Then, just about 28hours later another man was shotto death by a man riding with himin an automobile at Beach 6 Streetand Seagirt Boulevard. We hopethis is not the beginning of a long,hot summer full of murders in the101 Precinct.

You’ve got to give City Councilman James Sanders Jr. credit for creative press releases. Last week, Sanders sent a letter to MTA chair Jay Walder urging him to put up signs in each subway station that warn people that going on the tracks is dangerous. Duh! We can’t wait until Sanders makes this into a law, forcing the cash-strapped agency tens of thousands of dollars to put up signs that tell riders what is already obvious to everybody who uses the system.

A new poll shows that the vastmajority of Americans doesn’tapprove of Congress. The pollshows that Congress’ approvalrate is at 17 percent and that 77percent disapprove of what Congressis doing. The rest don’t care.Half of those responding said thatthey would replace every singlemember of Congress if they weregiven the chance. That’s a prettystrong indictment of what is goingon in Washington.

If you watch voting records closely, as we often do, you spot some glaring anomalies. Take Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer, who has been representing Rockaway in Albany for more than two decades. First, she voted in favor of the MTA plan to kill student MetroCards and then she signed a letter attacking the MTA for doing so. Tiz a puzzlement. She was not alone. There were fourteen legislators that did likewise.

Although Memorial Day is stillmonths away, the local AmericanLegion Post is planning for itsannual parade. This year marksthe 65th anniversary of the end ofWorld War II, and the Legion islooking for surviving local membersof the armed forces whofought in that war to be grandmarshals for the parade. Thoseveterans, or their families, areasked to contact parade coordinatorMike Honan at 917-685-4974.

Experts at the National Weather Service are warning that five hurricanes, three of them major storms, will strike the East Coast in what might well be an above-average Atlantic hurricane season.

Congressman Anthony Weiner isstill working with the Broad ChannelVolunteer Fire Department ona plan to provide a new firehousefor the organization. Both Weinerand Hillary Clinton (when she wasSenator Clinton) earmarked moneyfor the new and much-neededfacility, but the New York City FireDepartment put the kibosh on theplan for the city to host the newhouse. Weiner is now looking for afederal agency to take over as hostof the project. Weiner assures usthat the money is still available.